The first step is to register as a member. Basic membership is free, but â€¦

FIDE Premium Student Membership gives you a rating. It puts you on the same ladder as the World Champion and more than 130,000 competition players.

Isn't there the minor complication of playing in competitions registered for international rating and scoring 1 from 9 against existing rated players? For that matter national federations may require various memberships at an additional cost.

"Isn't there the minor complication of playing in competitions registered for international rating and scoring 1 from 9 against existing rated players? For that matter national federations may require various memberships at an additional cost."

FIDE do seem to change their title and rating rules for Olympiads, so perhaps they will extend it to junior chess? And I agree that the low or no cost might be illusory.

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Any player entering the CIS rating pool will immediately receive an initial rating based on their exact current age. A player aged 6 years or younger will receive a rating of 600, a player aged 12 years or older will receive a rating of 900, and players with an age between 6.00 years and 12.00 years will receive a proportional rating between 600 and 900, depending on age

It's a fib by FIDE then to say that individuals are on the same rating scale as Anand, unless you accept that this applies to all Elo style systems.

Soon (once all the technical problems have been solved - weeks or months at worst), the kids will indeed see themselves on the same ladder. Although the Student ratings will remain separate from the 'normal' ratings, the two lists will be published in a 'merged' form.

The QC will be keeping track of how well the two separate ratings correlate with a view to eventually (VERY eventually) merging the two together (provided it can be done without devaluing or damaging the main system in any way).

Oh, and as regards cost - â‚¬10 per annum for Premium Student membership (includes rating - NO rating fees - and various 'goodies').everything can be found at:cis.fide.comsm.fide.com (for membership - Basic is free, but no rating and very few 'goodies')psm.fide.com is the site for Premium members (restricted to paid up members - â‚¬10).

Kevin O'Connell wrote:The QC will be keeping track of how well the two separate ratings correlate with a view to eventually (VERY eventually) merging the two together (provided it can be done without devaluing or damaging the main system in any way).

If the rating will ever change by virtue of playing chess, as opposed to taking tests or getting older, how and under what circumstances will results be reported to FIDE?

If someone with student rating plays in their first adult tournament, do they already have a rating? If so, what do you do about national federations such as England who insist on individual domestic membership as a condition of allowing access to the main list?

Kevin O'Connell wrote:Soon (once all the technical problems have been solved - weeks or months at worst), the kids will indeed see themselves on the same ladder. Although the Student ratings will remain separate from the 'normal' ratings, the two lists will be published in a 'merged' form..

Reading part of the Key Features document again it says

Thus the pool of CIS ratings and the pool of FIDE ratings do not affect each other.

The technical problems of a merged list will be that you will have players with normal international ratings, players with Student ratings and players with both.